Description
Given Russia’s consecutive military doctrines’ clear messages to its neighbours and beyond on considering the former Soviet area as its “vital sphere of interest” and further elucidation of its enshrined commitment ‘to defend’ thereof, the aim of this paper is to examine the driving forces behind the military doctrines of Russia, on the one hand, and Armenia, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, one the other, targeted to illuminate their implications for security dynamics in the post-Soviet space, with an account of the reassessment of both theory and practice applicable therein.
Regardless of their essence—offensive, defensive or deterrent—and determinants affecting the choices, doctrines are ‘operational’ responses for the states seeking security. Having said that, if a state is permanently driven by security dilemma considerations—and, in the meantime, claims to seek security, what are the parameters of security and consequently, security space it constructs while interacting with other states? What is the red line between expressed and actual identity?
Intended to be a new theory of practice, the analysis of military doctrines—as the point where epistemology and ontology converge—empowers the study on the post-Soviet space security with both descriptive and prescriptive analytical tools, meanwhile, thwarts to put massive epistemological and ontological burden on the statements deduced by realism’s mainstream simplified theories of geopolitics or ‘Realpolitik’ provided that though the latter could offer a good framework to explain the doctrines devised by the authoritarian regimes, they lack descriptive repertoire of tools to depict the practices employed by the democratizing states that are constructed upon their identities and values as the expression of their interests. On the top of that, by adopting a pragmatist approach, the study gains additional prescriptive leverage for outlining the basis behind the system-transformation-oriented doctrines and their consequences for security dynamics in the post-Soviet space.
